Rwanda to charge EUR 200 for .rw domain use

In a move to squeeze out some cash from the tech-loving population and businesses in and out Rwanda that open up websites with the .rw doman name, the government has slapped a fee of over 200 euros (Rwf167,000) .The 200 euros will be as wholesale price for non-citizens while Rwandans will pay Rwf30,000 for .rw as sub domains will be at Rwf11,260.“Any domain that would not have been subscribed for will be suspended”

With acquisition of full rights to manage its domain name last year, the country is now looking at charging annual fees on all the users of its .rw domain and its sub domains. Currently, the Rwandan domain has 1,700 institutions using the .rw domain and its sub domains, 1,100 are using main domain .rw , 270
subscribers on .co.rw , 236 under .org domain, 11 use .net, while 61 institutions have .ac.rw.

“It is true international domain are cheaper than our domain but that’s because they have many holders, so going forward we want to start a campaign to sensitise organisations and individuals to use the .rw domain and am hopeful the this price will reduce”

— Ghislain Nkeramugaba

The government believes that if a person can search the Rwandan content through the .rw domain, it
means they will be using local bandwidth and the easier to search. The country currently uses around 1.1 to 1.2 Gigabytes per second of the international bandwidth compared to current demand of 5 gigabytes
needed to connect to the rest of the world.